A young lady in NYC decided to write a diary. Being a young lady what she wrote in her diary she considered to be private. It was her thoughts, her fears, her wants. It was for her.

Unfortunately, her brother was an uncultured clod and when he discovered her diary in a public area, knowing it was private, decided to read it. We can guess about how the brother handled such private disclosures.

The young lady realized that she needed some what to secure her diary from prying eyes. The idea of wrapping it in chains probably didn’t appeal to her. Like wise, it is unlikely she was able to get a high level wizard to spell lock it.

She found a small portable safe at a second hand store and bought it for cheap. She then proceeded to lock her personal items in the lock box to keep her private stuff private.

Her parents being meddling AWFLs couldn’t handle that so her father showed the lock box to a friend. The friend identified it as a “gun safe!” Exclamation marks in the original article.

Once the parents heard the word “gun” they had a mental break. They demanded that she get rid of the gun safe. They can’t have anything associated with a gun in the house. They young lady refused.

The parents aren’t worried about the gun safe holding a gun because the young lady is anti-gun but “GUN SAFE!” in the house is unacceptable.

Being unable to deal with their daughter refusing to give in to their crazed demands, the mother wrote to New York Times Social Q page for help.

There Philip Galanes comes to their rescue.

…Acknowledge your daughter’s valid distress and ask her to help you solve your problem with the gun safe in light of your shared philosophy about guns. Let her stash the diary elsewhere while you remove the safe, then negotiate a security system for her that wasn’t built for weapons.

More important, use this opportunity that’s fallen into your lap to talk with your children about guns. …
— Philip Galanes, New York Times: How Do We Get Rid of Our Teenage Daughter’s Gun Safe?

Yep, this editor of the NYT agrees with the parents that a gun safe is to awful to have in the home. Instead, the daughter should give up the good security she currently has for her diary and instead trust her parents to provide a “security system … that wasn’t built for weapons.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Is there an outreach program for parents like this? Heck, is there outreach programs for people that aren’t this far off their rockers?